


I Would Follow Your Soul As It Leads

by inexplicifics



Series: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack [2]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Study, Gen, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23405440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: Seven moments in Eskel's life as Geralt's best friend - and the right hand of the Warlord of the North - as they build their Pack together.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Eskel, Eskel & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Eskel & Jaskier | Dandelion, Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg & Eskel
Series: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683661
Comments: 173
Kudos: 4403
Collections: Good Relationship Etiquette (familial included) - or Good BDSM Etiquette - or Good Relationship and BDSM Etiquette





	I Would Follow Your Soul As It Leads

**Kaer Morhen**

Eskel looks around the courtyard wide-eyed, deeply intimidated by the tall stone walls and the grim faces of all the men passing by - there are no women among them at all. His uncle shakes hands with one of the oldest and grimmest of the men, turns, and walks away, leaving Eskel standing there alone. The old, grim man looks down at him and scowls, and Eskel swallows hard against tears. The old man has yellow eyes with slitted pupils like a cat’s, and there are scars all over his face, and he’s the scariest thing Eskel has ever seen in his five short years of life.

And then, from behind the old man’s legs, a boy just about Eskel’s age appears. “Master Vesemir, who’s this?” he asks, staring at Eskel in fascination.

“New trainee,” the grim old man says. “Eskel.” He frowns a little, and gestures at the two of them. “He’ll share your room. Show him where.”

“Yes, Master Vesemir,” the other boy says, and holds out a hand, smiling gap-toothed and cheerful at Eskel. “I’m Geralt!”

“Eskel,” Eskel says, and takes Geralt’s hand, and lets the other boy pull him into the keep.

Somehow, it’s a lot less scary with Geralt there to guide him.

***

**The Trial of the Grasses**

Eskel wakes up. He hurts everywhere, but he’s alive, which is something of a surprise, actually. Three in ten, the training masters said, and Eskel’s not enough of a fool to have believed _he’d_ be one of the lucky three.

Lucky. If becoming a Witcher can be called any sort of luck.

He sits up slowly, and blinks at the plain stone walls around him. The only light is the dim glow of the embers in the fireplace, but he can see as though in broad daylight. He can smell his own sour sweat and the lavender the sheets were stored with and the fact that the logs beside the fire are old oak and a little pine.

The door opens, and a tall slender form slips through. “Eskel,” says a voice Eskel would know blind drunk, half dead, from a mile away. Geralt settles on the end of the bed, staring at Eskel with wide golden eyes so full of relief that it hurts to see. “You’re awake.”

“Your hair’s white,” Eskel says, a little stupidly. Geralt grimaces and swipes at the pale strands.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yours isn’t.”

“Well, good, at least that way Lambert will stop pretending he can’t tell us apart,” Eskel says, for lack of anything better. They _do_ look alike, him and Geralt, but they’re not as identical as Lambert likes to pretend.

“Yeah,” Geralt says, and lunges forward abruptly to wrap his arms around Eskel. Eskel hugs back just as tightly, burying his face in white hair and holding on.

Later, he’ll have to ask which of their training class didn’t make it through the Trials, but for right now, by some miracle, he and Geralt are both alive, and that’s enough.

***

**Ard Carraigh**

Eskel’s boots land silently on the stone walkway behind the crenellations, and he crouches low so his silhouette won’t show against the sky. Geralt is already waiting for him. Behind them, Lambert and Coen and Axel and Cedric and Letho come sliding over the wall like so many shadows. Seven Witchers against an entire city - Eskel would feel sorry for the Kaedweni guards if they weren’t defending a true monster of a king.

“Stairs,” Geralt says, a breath of sound no one but a Witcher could hear, and leads the way down off the walkway and into the city. This is not a hunt like any other Eskel has ever been on, but there are some strong similarities: the need for silence and concealment, ghosting from shadow to shadow between the looming buildings; the rising anticipation as they near their quarry; the bitter taste of Cat in the back of his throat.

The palace at the center of the city is large, but Letho has been here before, which is why the Viper was chosen for this mission. He leads the way once they’re inside the palace grounds, ghosting past guards and courtiers alike - not that there are many of either awake now, in the witching hour. The Witchering hour, Eskel supposes, and tucks that joke away to tell Geralt once this is over.

The king of Kaedwen is asleep, and his guards are not particularly alert. Well, why should they be? Everyone knows the Witcher army camped outside the gates of the city doesn’t have any siege weapons, and there’s no way anyone could get past the army and the walls and the entire _city_ to threaten the king, right?

Eskel casts Axii without even breaking stride, and the guards’ eyes go glassy as the Witchers glide past - and stay glassy as the Witchers leave again, a silent blanket-wrapped bundle carried over Geralt’s shoulder.

As dawn breaks, hours later, Eskel watches Geralt’s steel sword rise and catch the light, and wonders idly if Geralt ought to have used silver. Silver for monsters, after all.

But steel is quite good enough to take the king of Kaedwen’s head.

***

**White Wolf**

“It’s _what_?” Eskel asks.

The man flinches back, trembling, and the bitter scent of fear gets even stronger. “Tribute, lord, from King Szymon of Kaedwen, to his overlord the White Wolf, Warlord of the North, leader of the Witchers.”

“His overlord,” Eskel says slowly. “Geralt.”

“The - the White Wolf, lord,” the man quavers. “Who slew the old king before the gates of Ard Carraigh, and freed us of his evil.”

“Yes, I was there,” Eskel says, staring at the line of wagons winding down the Trail. How they _got_ wagons up the trail is a mystery he’s going to spend some time pondering. “So King Szymon considers the Wolf to be his...overlord.”

“Yes, lord,” the man says.

“Huh,” Eskel says, baffled almost beyond words. This was _not_ part of the plan Geralt had outlined. “Well. I’m the Wolf’s...second-in-command. Tell King Szymon we accept his...offering.”

“Thank you, lord!” the man says, thrusting the handful of reins he’s holding at Eskel.

“And I’m not a lord,” Eskel says. “It’s just Eskel.”

The man bobs his head nervously. “Of course, Lord Eskel.”

Hoo boy. Eskel takes the reins, and the horses, thankfully, don’t try to grovel or anything ridiculous like that.

Eskel sees the humans off down the Trail again, sets Lambert and Aubry and anyone else he can catch to distributing the loot from the wagons, and goes looking for Geralt. He doesn’t find him. He _does_ find Vesemir, looking exasperated and amused in about equal measure.

“That boy,” he says, when Eskel asks where Geralt is. “He took off up-mountain like his tail was on fire as soon as he heard that fellow say he’d brought _tribute_.”

Eskel sighs and rubs his forehead. “Well, when he gets back, he gets to figure out what, precisely, the Warlord of the North is going to do _next_.”

Vesemir grins. “And in the meantime, _you_ can start figuring that out, too...second-in-command.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Eskel says, and goes to start pulling together ideas.

***

**Cub**

Eskel doesn’t love Ciri immediately. She’s eight months old when Geralt brings her back to Kaer Morhen, a tiny squalling thing with a tuft of ash-blonde hair and startling green eyes that she must’ve got from her mother, because Geralt’s were never that color, even before the Trials, and Eskel’s immediate reaction to her is incredulous befuddlement. Only Geralt would take what is probably going to be his last opportunity to go out on the Path as a common Witcher instead of the Warlord of the North and come back with a baby _girl_.

Eskel cares for her, of course, because she’s Geralt’s cub: he helps set up a tower room as a nursery, and sends Lambert down the Trail to find a nanny goat for milk, and takes his turns on diaper duty (and how an infant human can generate such _foul_ smells, worse than almost anything else Eskel has smelled in his long life full of truly distressing odors, he’s got no idea), but it’s all just - something he does because it needs to be done. He’s heard that human parents find a joy in caring for their children, but he doesn’t really understand it.

And then one day he’s holding her as Geralt fusses about changing the sheets in her crib, and the tiny person in his arms reaches up and puts a hand square atop the scars that mar his face, the ones that even other _Witchers_ sometimes flinch from, and says, adoringly, “Unca _Essel_ ,” and Eskel feels his Witcher-slow heart turn over.

Lambert gives him a lot of shit for doting on the cub - not that Lambert’s any better, frankly - but Eskel would kill or die for her and doesn’t mind who knows it. She’s his cub as much as she is Geralt’s, his moon-bright daughter, and she holds his heart in her tiny hands.

***

**Lilac and Gooseberries**

Eskel rubs his forehead. He does that a lot these days; being the Warlord’s right hand comes with even more headaches than he thought it would. “ _Why_ do you want to swear yourself to the Wolf?” he asks, eyeing the mages warily. There are eight of them - and eight mages is _plenty_ to cause more havoc than Eskel will be able to deal with - and their leader is a violet-eyed, impossibly beautiful woman who looks like _trouble_.

“I could tell you some lie about how we want to join the White Wolf and defend the continent from monsters,” the violet-eyed woman says, “but I’ve heard Witchers can smell lies, and anyhow I’m bored of lying. The Warlord is going to be the most powerful monarch on the continent within a decade, if not sooner, and we want to be on _his_ side.”

Well. That’s...blunt.

But it is also _honest_ , and frankly, the Wolf’s forces _need_ mages. There are some things even silver and steel won’t cut. The mages swear the most binding oaths Geralt and Eskel and Vesemir can contrive - three days and nights of frantic research, paging through half the books in the library, scribbling down ideas and crossing them out just as quickly - and settle in, uneasy but useful.

It’s three months later that Yennefer comes back to Eskel, looking extremely put out, and demands, “Alright, what’s the fucking _trick_? He can’t _really_ be doing this just to _protect_ people.”

“Oh, you underestimate his stubbornness,” Eskel sighs. “That’s really all there is.”

“Fuck,” Yennefer says, and then she laughs, and slumps down into a chair, inelegant as Eskel has never seen her before. “I _do_ want power. Don’t get me wrong. But I guess - I guess we’re here to kill monsters after all. Because I can’t fucking bear to let him _down_.” There’s weary truth in it, like she never expected to say such things, and can’t quite believe she’s saying them now.

Eskel raises his mug of weak ale to her. “Welcome to the Pack, then,” he says. “We’re all just following the Wolf.”

Yennefer chuckles, shaking her head, and conjures herself a goblet of wine, and raises it to Eskel. “To the damned White Wolf and his fucking _morals_ ,” she grumbles, and drains it dry.

***

**Buttercup**

Eskel’s gotten used to tribute wagons, and strings of horses, and mules with saddlebags full of gold and gems and spices. A kid on a horse, though, that’s new, and an unpleasant change. What the fuck sort of stories are they telling down in Redania that they think the Wolf wants _people_ as tribute?

The boy is handsome enough, sure, but he’s also almost catatonic with fear, and between that and the rope around his hands, there’s no way in hell he’s a volunteer. Eskel hides a wave of pity behind a glare, and sends the Redanian guards stumbling backwards as he leads the boy’s horse into the keep. Worst comes to worst, they’ll find a place for the lad in a village somewhere in the Wolf’s lands - somewhere no one will do anything stupid like send him off to offer to the Wolf like a particularly tasty morsel.

The bitter reek of fear is rare in Kaer Morhen these days, and Eskel is just as glad they don’t meet anyone but Lambert - who is an ass, but knows when to keep his mouth shut - on their way to Geralt’s office. He’s planning to suggest sending the lad down-mountain as soon as Geralt is done looking him over, assuming Geralt doesn’t do it first.

And then it turns out that the lad may be scared half out of his wits, but he’s got a spine of fucking _steel_. Eskel’s seen grown men, battle-scarred and titled, go to their knees in front of Geralt’s glare, seen proud sorceresses flinch from the sight of the White Wolf in his glory, but the lad keeps his feet and holds his head high, and lists off his skills in a voice that doesn’t shake despite the way his hands are trembling. And the bitter twist to his mouth, that says he thinks he’s here as a sacrifice to - to whatever the fucking Redanians think Geralt is like in bed, is enough to make Eskel and Yen alike wince.

So young, to be so wounded; and so brave despite his fear.

If there’s one thing that impresses a Witcher, it’s courage. And there’s not so many men who can look Geralt in the eye without flinching. _Buttercup_ , hm? Pretty and poisonous and resilient. A good name for the court bard of the Warlord of the North.

Eskel’s not surprised when Geralt decides to keep the lad. Beauty, courage, and talent? He’ll be fucking Witcher _catmint_ , if he ever stops smelling of fear.

Oh, _and_ he turns out to be good with Ciri.

Eskel gives it eight months before Geralt falls in love. Yen, the cynical witch, thinks it’ll be a year. (Even more irritatingly, she’s _right_. They both see it, the moment Geralt loses his heart, as the little buttercup of a bard proclaims his loyalty to the Wolf and leans into Geralt’s claiming hand, almost a year to the day after he first arrived.)

Eskel wouldn’t have guessed their Pack needed a bard. He's not ashamed to admit that he was wrong.

Even wolves, it seems, need flowers.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] I Would Follow Your Soul As It Leads](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24025651) by [AceOfTigers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceOfTigers/pseuds/AceOfTigers)
  * [[Podfic] I Would Follow Your Soul As It Leads](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26915182) by [Yuurei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuurei/pseuds/Yuurei)




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